Culture, Communication, Complexity.

Masked

Having recently found myself in a social context with a diverse group of people I have known for some time, it dawned on me the extent to which that face and gestural presence or vocal mannerism and body type that I more commonly experience as each of these Others is no more them than am I similarly and simply reducible to or defined by my own superficial bodily presence and activity. Although the way someone looks and overtly acts tends to shape our communications with (and considerations of) them, there also exists an abstract mental space to which we might more concretely attribute personhood or subjective agency. We are all, it seems, hidden from one another in fundamental and irreducible ways.

Questions as to the extent that we are also implicitly hidden from ourselves in fundamentally problematic (if not troubling) ways must remain unanswered, if not unanswerable.